The initial idea was sparked by an article I read which claimed that Ireland was once split in two and that both halves of the island were on separate continents.
Just in case you didn’t know, tomorrow is the first of April [it is? - Ed] aka April Fool’s Day. So, by way of a public information announcement, and in particular if you were fooled by Panorama’s Swiss spaghetti harvest[ahem - Ed] or the more recent Google Lunar Base, Slate have helpfully produced an updated “Defense Kit” with numerous links to keep you busy informed. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.. again.
DUP Forum delegate Peter Weir said: “We want to see a Bill of Rights which can command that support across the population of Northern Ireland. What has been produced does not even come close to representing that.”
He continued: “The main recommendations are contained in Chapter Four of the report. That chapter contains 41 substantive proposals. None of these proposals were passed unanimously and none of them have cross community support. “There are 216 secondary recommendations. None of them was passed unanimously and a mere seven have cross-community support,” he added.
A free press is not exactly a prerequisite for a free society, but it’s absence is (or should be) extremely worrying. In all of the comment in the MSN last week, this aspect of the climbdown of the Andersonstown News after pressure was applied over an article the paper published from its erstwhile columnist/humourist, Squinter seemed largely to be missed. It’s all the more puzzling since Gerry Adams is sitting on the fourth safest majority in the House of Commons with a whopping 68.6 per cent of the popular vote. On Thursday Alex Maskey expressed the hope that the paper’s response to his party’s concerns should be an end to the matter. Over at the Guardian, I’ve argued that there that both reflects badly on his paper and raises questions about just how ready Sinn Fein is to live with the vigorous scrutiny of a courageous and free press.
[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin]
Some 35 years ago I went to work in Dublin for a large British company and over the next two decades witnessed the remarkable changes which the Republic of Ireland underwent during that period. Returning to work in Northern Ireland for an Irish company in 1993, I have been privileged once again to participate in and witness the remarkable changes of a society learning to live with itself and in the changing world around it. The past year has seen a great leap forward in that ongoing change. Even 12 short months ago, who would have believed that in that period Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness would sit down in government together and within a few months would be getting on so famously that they would be dubbed the ‘chuckle brothers’? Or that First Minister Ian Paisley would greet Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Dublin, and then at the Battle of the Boyne site, with a warm handshake? Or that the North/South Ministerial Council would have resumed with 11 out of the 12 sectoral meetings planned since last July having taken place in an atmosphere of cordiality and pragmatism?
The Centre for Cross Border Studies has and is continuing to play its part in these moves towards good neighbourliness and cooperation for mutual benefit. Whether it is training civil servants in cross-border cooperation; creating a website with information for cross-border commuters for the North/South Ministerial Council (http://www.crossbordermobility.info); teaching schoolchildren in the border region how to live harmoniously with the immigrant ‘newcomers’ who have enriched both our societies; joining with the IBEC-CBI Joint Business Council to provide cross-border postgraduate scholarships, or bringing the universities on the island together to work on development cooperation in Africa, the Centre is at the forefront of new ideas and innovative ways of doing things on a North-South basis. The plaudits for its work have continued to flow from the British and Irish Governments, and from Ministers of the new Executive. Its appropriately-named Note from the Next Door Neighbours monthly e-bulletin is now received by over 6,000 subscribers.
For in many ways the neighbourly and businesslike ethos of the past year had been anticipated by the Centre. In the words emblazoned across its http://www.crossborder.ie website (one of three major websites it now runs), it is about ‘generating real benefits through practical cross-border cooperation in Ireland.’ In his introduction to a recent book of essays from the North/South Public Sector Training Programme – which the Centre organises along with Cooperation Ireland and the Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy – the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, said: ‘Practical North-South cooperation for mutual benefit is one of the cornerstones of both the Belfast and St Andrews Agreements. In this context, what these young public servants are doing is truly pioneering. Here is the pith and substance of what good government is meant to be about. These essays all outline fresh new ideas, clearly laid out, about how practical cross-border and all-island cooperation can make a real difference to improving the lives of the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland.’
Over the past year members of the Centre’s staff have been commissioned to do research in areas as different as cross-border GP out of hours services, trade unions’ involvement in North-South cooperation, the cross-border exchange of student teachers and cross-border postgraduate flows. In February the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, launched a book on cross border cooperation in the past decade – Crossing the Border: New Relationships between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – three of whose 13 chapters had been contributed by CCBS or former CCBS staff members.
In addition, the Centre has started to develop a wider, European dimension. Relationships are being built with two of the most important cross-border organisations in the EU, the French government’s cross-border co-operation agency Mission Opérationelle Transfrontalière (MOT) and the continent’s longest-established and exemplary cross-border regional network, the Dutch-German EUREGIO. Last November director Andy Pollak spoke alongside former French Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy (now chairman of MOT) at an 850-delegate conference in Lille to launch EUROMOT, an ambitious network of pan-European local authorities stretching from Portugal to Russia.
A leading official from EUREGIO (along with the Spanish Secretary-General of the Association of European Border Regions) will speak at a conference being organised by the Centre (along with Cooperation Ireland) in Dundalk on 12-13 June on lessons other European border regions can learn from the North-South ‘Strand Two’ of the Northern Irish peace process.
There is a new Scottish dimension as well. On 15 May the Centre will join with the University of Stirling to organise a conference in Belfast (to be opened by Minister for Finance and Personnel, Peter Robinson) for senior politicians, bankers, investment specialists, economists and others on financial services in the ‘Celtic Rim’ countries: Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland. Truly it can be said that the Centre for Cross Border Studies has never been busier.
Chris Gibson
This is an edited version of the introduction by Dr Chris Gibson, Chairman of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, to the 2008 edition of ‘The Journal of Cross Border Studies in Ireland’ (available price £10/€14, including postage and packing, from the Centre in Armagh).
To be honest Morgan Tsvangirai is also a relatively divisive figure. In addition leading figures in the army have previously said they would not accept him as President, which raises further disturbing possibilities. No matter who ends up being elected Zimbabwe is in a truly parlous state. We will all wait and see regarding the outcome. Maybe there is light at the end of this tunnel of despair for Zimbabwe, a tunnel it has been in essentially since Ian Smith declared UDI if not before.
Dr Paisley is about to embark on what amounts to a lap of honour before he steps down as First Minister and DUP leader at the end of May. He will be overseas, attending functions in New York and Washington, on the actual date of the 10th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, 10 April.
For the peace process was solely about ensuring the IRA never bombed London again; and as far as MI5 - the prime movers of the peace process - was concerned, the corruption of Northern Irish political life was a small price to pay.
Sunday Sequence should have an interview I did with them recently on the effects of new media on politics in the context of the US election. That’s an hour earlier than you may have thought since the clocks go forward tonight - so it is really a quarter to one, and not a quarter to midnight as I type this post. Adds: it obviously didn’t make the cut!
In his promotion of the union, not only in relation to Scotland but also Wales, the prime minister failed to mention Northern Ireland, which drew a wave of criticism from Ulster unionists and their supporters in the Tory press.
Yet neither unionist politicians or their allies in the London media ought to be surprised over Brown’s omission of Northern Ireland - because the delicate political settlement that has guaranteed the union between the north of Ireland and Britain requires periods of diplomatic silence.
Unlike the printed version, the full online text of Brown’s article did mention Northern Ireland, but only in passing. And it’s a sufficiently fleeting a mention, compared to Wales and Scotland, to still support the argument made by Henry McDonald.
Unlike Scotland and Wales, Gordon Brown doesn’t have to compete for votes against other parties in Northern Ireland. That is because Labour doesn’t organise across the Irish Sea.
The only thing the prime minister has to concern himself with is that the political settlement at Stormont remains in place.
To trumpet the continued existence of Northern Ireland inside the UK would be to rub nationalist noses in it.
So instead the British government maintains radio silence on the north’s constitutional status.
The Human Rights Forum tends to provoke significant reactions from many. The Newsletter is reporting a leak of the draft document outlining current ideas for the Bill of Rights.
According to the Newsletter the following may be being proposed:
-Raising the age of criminal responsibility to 18 – meaning that rapists, murderers and other criminals under that age could not be prosecuted;
-Defining victims as those who have survived “violent, conflict-related incidents” with no distinction between those responsible for atrocities and innocent victims.
The document also states “Everyone shall enjoy appropriate healthcare and social care services, including reproductive healthcare.”
Lord Laird has attacked the whole thing and has suggested that the Secretary of State may veto parts of the proposals.
A spokesman for the HRF stressed that the document was still a draft and said the contentious issues of abortion, victims and the age of criminal responsibility had yet to be agreed upon by the group.
“The public are very welcome to observe our plenary session at the Wellington Park Hotel today from 9am to 6pm,” he said.
Whilst I have tried in the past to avoid the knee jerk opposition to the Bill of Rights; these proposals, which I accept, are only leaks of a draft are pretty ludicrous. A number of the proposals run very clearly contrary to what seems to be the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland and this body seems to potentially have power and authority without any mandate or democratic accountability.
The Belfast Telegraph and BBC are reporting that representatives of the Winning Moves (the makers of Monopoly) were in Belfast yesterday to launch the Belfast edition and indeed to canvass opinion as to which places should be included. There is of course already a Northern Ireland edition of Monopoly. I wonder if they could make a special politically controversial version (or maybe two versions) with various places being worthless or valuable dependent on the appropriate market. We could call it Bigotopoly.
Interesting interjection by DUP MLA Jim Wells, and one I entirely agree with, on the felling of a number of protected trees in a private estate on the outskirts of Newcastle, County Down. One for the Northern Ireland Minister for the Environment, the DUP’s Arlene Foster, to ponder.. As the Woodland Trust spokesman says,
Patrick Craig from the Woodland Trust said: “We’re just absolutely appalled that yet again some more native trees have been destroyed.
“The legislation is very, very strong, but unfortunately when it comes to enforcement, there doesn’t seem to be the willingness or ability of anybody to actually enforce those protection orders.”
A DOE spokesperson said: “Planning Service can confirm that investigations into a possible breach of planning control in the Bryansford area of Newcastle are ongoing, however we cannot comment on the details of the investigation at this stage.”
I was brought up quite near Kilrea which contrary to some people’s views is not actually noted for particularly good community relations. The latest problem has been the “tit for tat” flying of flags. Apparently this episode began when the Irish tricolour was raised over the St Patrick’s Church of Ireland church on Easter Sunday. As some form of “retaliation” the Union flag was then raised over the Marion Hall in the town.
This unpleasant silliness has been condemned by both Olive Church the local UUP councillor who is a member of St. Patrick’s CoI and John Dallat the SDLP MLA. I am slightly disappointed to see, however, that Dallat described the misuse of the Union flag as a sectarian desecration (which I entirely agree with) but seemed not to use the term sectarian when describing flying the tricolour over St. Patrick’s. Overall I thought his condemnation of the attack on the CoI was less fulsome than that on the Marion Hall. Maybe I am being too sensitive.
Jim Allister has made a speech tonight at a meeting in Portrush. He is claiming that part of the deal between the DUP and SF over the 11 councils will include a D’Hondt style mandatory coalition in the councils. This is odd considering that the DUP claim to be aiming to end the mandatory coalition at Stormont. If so surely this will weaken their negotiating position on such matters or maybe agreeing to D’Hondt was part of the price along with the 11 councils they had to pay to get next year’s elections suspended. Jim Allister also raises the question of what sanctions might be taken against anyone refusing to work the mandatory coalition arrangements. I will put the statement below the fold:
“Though the ballot is today achieving more for them than the bullet, it is not their only weapon – the murder of Paul Quinn is striking enough evidence of that, but in addition they are waging a cultural war, motivated by the same obsession of eradicating every last vestige of Britishness from Ulster. Hence the concerted campaign in local councils, from Banbridge to Limavady. Now, to be followed by the same insatiable republican agenda in Stormont. At the same time they republicanise our public roads and spaces with odious monuments to butchering terrorists. And all this from those some foolishly acclaim as having “bought into the British state”. Knaves and fools are always a dangerous combination. But when they are joined in government it brings the sort of spectacle we’ve had for the past year.
Now, I fear, we are poised to see the same visited on local government. The DUP promised 15 councils, but, post Dromore, in order to avoid elections in 2009, they hurriedly struck a deal with IRA/Sinn Fein for 11, but the full price extracted by the Shinners has not yet been revealed. It is concealed by the wrapping that is called “equality measures”. You will note Minister Foster has been deliberately vague on what conceding this Sinn Fein demand entails. I call on her to be upfront and clear on exactly what has been agreed. My suspicion is that we are going to see the institutionalising of mandatory coalition under de Hondt throughout local government, so that republicans are guaranteed places of importance in every council, even the most unionist. At the same time I suspect punitive measures will be put in place to deal with unionists who reject such rigged arrangements, all in the name of Sinn Fein inspired “equality measures”.
If mandatory coalition is indeed institutionalised in local government it gives the lie to the pretence that in time it will be phased out at Stormont. How could the DUP hope to deliver voluntary coalition at Stormont if DUP Minister Foster imposes mandatory coalition in local government? Such a diet of false promise is for the fairies.”
Evidence which has now become available helps clarify a dispute sparked three years ago by the assertion of former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe that terms for ending the strike, accepted by the prisoners’ leadership in the Maze/Long Kesh, were rejected by IRA commanders outside. The implication is that the lives of six of the hunger strikers might have been saved if the prisoners hadn’t been overruled.
McCann also confirms Richard O’Rawe’s account on WBAI’s Radio Free Eireann (starts @ 42mins in; right click, save as): “I have confirmation of that. I have spoken to people who are certainly in a position to know what happened, who were in a position at that time to know exactly what was going on ... Broadly speaking, the information which I now have, I am absolutely satisfied with, is that in blunt terms that Richard O’Rawe, on the key issue between himself and Danny Morrison and the others, that Richard O’Rawe was right and that those who were arguing against him were wrong.”
“I think that’s right…that Richard O’Rawe is telling the truth. ... I don’t know what the motivation for the rejection, by the outside IRA leadership, for the rejection of the offer, which was made on 6/7th of July, at that time, I don’t know what the motivation was and therefore I can’t confirm the motivation, but I can confirm that it happened, that the prisoners’ acceptance of the deal was over-ruled by the outside leadership.”
“I have also spoken to the ‘Mountain Climber’; ... of course, he didn’t know what was going on inside the prison, but the things that he did know and which he’s told me, confirm Richard O’Rawe’s account.”
During this period, negotiations being conducted through the Derry man known as ‘the Mountain Climber’ were stepped up.
O’Rawe’s allegation is that an offer from the Foreign Office, conveyed to McFarlane on July 5, two days before the fifth hunger-striker, Joe McDonnell, was to die, conceded three of the prisoners’ five demands and effectively conceded a fourth.
He says that McFarlane pushed a document containing these proposals along a pipe to his cell.
He maintains that it offered that prisoners could wear their own clothes, have remission restored and enjoy more visits and letters — three of the five demands — and that while prison work wouldn’t be eliminated, ‘work’ would be broadly defined so as to include educational and cultural activities. The one demand not covered was free association within the wings.
“It was a fantastic offer. I never expected it,” says O’Rawe. He recalls a shouted conversation between himself and McFarlane, two cells away.
“We spoke in Irish so the screws could not understand. I said, ‘Ta go leor ann’ — there’s enough there.
“He said, ‘Aontaim leat, scriobhfaidh me chun taoibh amuigh agus cuirfidh me fhois orthu’ — I agree with you, I will write to the outside and let them know.”
McCann spoke to a number of people who have confirmed O’Rawe’s account:
... a number of republicans, including former prisoners, have confirmed that O’Rawe did voice the allegations on more than one occasion before publication of his book.
One ex-prisoner who had been on the same wing as O’Rawe and McFarlane and who also claims to have heard the exchange says that, independently of O’Rawe, he broached the subject of the rejected deal with senior IRA figures during the 1990s.
More importantly, the man who was sharing a cell with O’Rawe in July 1981 confirms O’Rawe’s account: “Richard isn’t a liar. He told the truth in his book. I heard what passed between Richard and Bik (McFarlane). I remember Richard saying, ‘Ta go leor ann,’ and the reply, ‘Aontaim leat.’ There’s just no question that that happened.”
O’Rawe’s account of the negotiations as seen from “inside” will not be contradicted by the account from a different perspective contained in the BBC programme to be transmitted tonight focusing on the role of the ‘Mountain Climber’, Brendan Duddy.
And, in what seems to be a recurring problem for the Sinn Fein leadership:
The suspicions which still surround the events and which have damaged the republican leadership in the eyes of many former activists arise, it seems, not so much from O’Rawe’s narrative of what happened but from an adamant refusal on the part of the IRA leadership of the time to admit to serious and, in the end, fatal errors in their conduct of the hunger strike and from determined efforts to blacken O’Rawe’s name in an attempt to obscure the truth.
Before heading over to Mark Devenport’s blog to see the draft Bill of Rights, delivered by Chris Sidoti for discussion at the Bill of Rights Forum, it is worth reminding people what the remit given the Forum was in the first place:
“To advise on the scope for defining, in Westminster legislation, rights supplementary to those in the European Convention on Human Rights, to reflect the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland, drawing as appropriate on international instruments and experience. These additional rights to reflect the principles of mutual respect for the identity and ethos of both communities and parity of esteem, and – taken together with the ECHR – to constitute a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.”
Now, before anyone panics, there is still most of a weekend of discussions (and presumably a lot of horse trading) before this gets passed on to the Human Rights Commission. Thence, it will pass through various hands (the most brutal of which is likely to be the NIO) before showing up at Stormont. But some of the stuff that’s in there bears little relationship to enactable law. More importantly, much of seems to have flagrantly ignored the remit and/or has gone way beyond matters that are under the control of the devolved institutions.
One slightly bemused delegate told Slugger:
The Unionists are largely opposed as most new rights are outwith the remit, excepted (UK) matters, programmatic, party political issues or uncosted as well as frequently repeating what is in the ECHR and thus the Human Rights Act.
The ‘voluntary’ sector has no concept of compromise and are almost religious in their certainties. Zealotry is one description or silent solidarity. CoSO could be described as the mute sector.
Most of its proposals are worthy but to the left of the left of the Labour Party. The SDLP is in favour of anything and everything except abortion and won’t oppose any SF proposal. DUP were somewhat intermittent in their attendance but have become more rigorous of late.
Another source agreed to an extent there was an air of unreality to some of the proposals coming from the voluntary sectors, but that some of the critical players, like the Unions, had experience of bargaining and was confident that the final draft can be whittled down to something more likely to get enacted.
There has been no voting mechanism agreed, so the Forum is in for an intense weekend of horse trading bit by bit until it’s offering due to be delivered on Monday at 2pm at the Hilton Hotel. A rally called by the Human Rights Consortium for Monday afternoon has been cancelled due to “ongoing workloads and time restrictions in the build up to the end of the Forum’s work”.
Bebo has become the source of much difficulty in interface areas with the site being used to organise peace-line confrontations between young people. However, this phenomenon is not unique to Northern Ireland and in Derby police have acted on information from the site to tackle gang fights. One for the PSNI to watch.
The electoral office is planning to make an example of 50 people for not registering to vote. Vote registration is now a legal requirement and failure to do so is punishable by a £1000 fine.
A fascinating, if slightly eerie, sound has surfaced 148 years after it was recorded - That’s 17 years before Edison spoke “Mary had a little lamb” onto his phonograph. The Professor pointed to this New York Times article about the recording yesterday and the BBC have followed up today with this online report and they also have an audio report [RealPlayer file] which includes a recording of Thomas Edison and an interview with the great-grandson of the inventor responsible, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. First Sounds uncovered the 1860 recording, and they have others - “Scott recorded someone singing an excerpt from the French folksong “Au Clair de la Lune” on April 9, 1860” [mp3 file]. From the First Sounds press release [pdf file]
Roughly ten seconds in length, the recording is of a person singing “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit” – a snippet from a French folksong. It was made on April 9, 1860 by Parisian inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on his “phonautograph” – a device that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp.
“When I first heard the recording as you hear it ... it was magical, so ethereal,” audio historian David Giovannoni, who found the recording, told AP.
“The fact is it’s recorded in smoke. The voice is coming out from behind this screen of aural smoke.”
....
Previously, the oldest known recorded voice was thought to be Thomas Edison’s recording of Mary had a little lamb. The inventor of the light bulb recorded the stanza to test another of his inventions - the phonograph - in 1877.
“It doesn’t take anything away from Thomas Edison, in my opinion,” Mr Giovannoni told Reuters.
“But actually, the truth is he was the first person to have recorded [sound] and played it back.”
The tri-partite consultation on the future constitutional arrangements for Scotland has commenced (funded by the Scottish Parliament and UK government). This will be competing with the SNP Minority Government’s national conversation. The latest consultation will examine the thorny and complex issue of the UK funding arrangements - the infamous Barnett formula. Nick Robinson seems to think Barnett is on its way out. Maybe the Northern Ireland Executive should be thinking of making a submission and we could learn something from our Canadian cousins attempts to wrestle with similar issues.
Brian Rowan writes of the DUP-SF backchannel, allegedly facilitated by a well known journalist, and warns that the denials made in the past will come back to bite in the future: “The danger in all of this is that the denial continues and the truth emerges.” Read about it in the Belfast Telegraph and the BBC.
Thanks, Jone, for the link - I didn’t know it was made public. If true it places the journalist in a very compromised position, as how could he report on the peace process while at the same time being so integral to it? It raises a number of other awkward questions, too.
Some science news [as we don’t get enough.. - Ed]. With the Space Shuttle Endeavour safely on the ground at Kennedy Space Centre - video here - the European Space Agency’s Jules Verne ATV is finally approaching the International Space Station - the dot below the edge of the Earth in the image is the Jules Verne viewed from the ISS. And it’s not that the residents of the Space Station don’t trust 
A fascinating, if slightly eerie, sound has surfaced 148 years after it was recorded - That’s 17 years before Edison spoke “Mary had a little lamb” onto his phonograph. The Professor pointed to this New York Times article about the recording yesterday and the BBC have followed up today with this online report and they also have an audio report [RealPlayer file] which includes a recording of Thomas Edison and an interview with the great-grandson of the inventor responsible, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. First Sounds uncovered the 1860 recording, and they have others - “Scott recorded someone singing an excerpt from the French folksong “Au Clair de la Lune” on April 9, 1860” [mp3 file]. From the First Sounds press release [pdf file]
